Thirty-four years after Crassus marched seven legions into the Mesopotamian dust and lost them, Augustus put their recovered standards on a coin and called it a victory. This denarius of around 19 BC, struck at an uncertain Spanish mint (RIC I 86b), shows the princeps bare-headed on the obverse, every inch the citizen-magistrate, while the reverse stages the propaganda coup of the decade: a round shield lettered CL • V (the *clipeus virtutis* voted him by the Senate in 27 BC) flanked by an aquila and a signum, ringed by SIGNIS RECEPTIS S P Q R. The standards in question had been pried from Parthian hands not by the legions of a vengeful Antony or a reborn Crassus but by diplomacy, the careful pressure of Tiberius on the Armenian frontier persuading Phraates IV that returning a few decades-old eagles was cheaper than another war.
Augustus sold it to Rome as conquest. The Senate believed him, or pretended to, and the recovered eagles were lodged in the new Temple of Mars Ultor, Mars the Avenger, whose vengeance had in fact been a negotiation. Here on a sliver of silver is the Augustan method in miniature: a settlement dressed as a triumph, the *res publica* restored, the shield of virtues hung beside the eagles of the dead, and not a single Roman soldier required to make the story true.
- Mint
- Uncertain Spanish mint
- Struck
- circa 19 BC
- Authority
- Augustus
- Reverse
- shows a round shield inscribed CL • V with aquila and signum flanking, surrounded by SIGNIS RECEPTIS and S P Q R